Indie Basement is a weekly column on BrooklynVegan focusing on classic indie and alternative artists, “college rock,” and new and current acts who follow a similar path. There are reviews of new albums, reissues, box sets, books and sometimes movies and television shows. I’ve rounded up May’s best music, highlighting my favorite songs and albums, plus links to relevant features and news, a monthly playlist, and more.
May was easily the most exciting single month for new music of the year so far, with at least a couple albums I feel sure will be in my Top 10 come December. I couldn’t narrow it down to five so I picked six albums this time, and a few that narrowly missed include DIIV’s Frog in Boiling Water, King Hannah’s Big Swimmer, Crowded House’s Gravity Stairs, La Luz’s News of the Universe, and Arab Strap’s I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍. On the songs front, I had even more trouble paring things down to 10, so this one goes to 11.
Luckily, for the spillover there’s the Indie Basement Best of May Playlist, which has 67 songs of all the month’s best stuff. Head below for that and everything else.
INDIE BASEMENT – BEST SONGS OF MAY 2024
The Besnard Lakes – “(Dizzy) Eagle”
Nobody else makes them like The Besnard Lakes. Like filmmaker David Lean, Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas’ work, only in Epics, the kind that build slowly over seven minutes from tranquil beginnings where the sun is only hinting at cracking the horizon to full-on, guns-blazing action filmed in slow motion as our heroes try and escape seemingly insurmountable odds with roaring, soaring guitars, crashing drums and glorious harmonies as their cast of thousands. They’ve made this movie again and again for nearly two decades and, as “(Dizzy) Eagle” shows, it never gets old.
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The Bug Club – “Quality Pints”
Scrappy Welsh duo The Bug Club (bassist/vocalist Tilly Harris and guitarist/vocalist Sam Willmett) have signed to Sub Pop but lost none of their scrappy, rabble-rousing charm. “Quality Pints” is the kind of indie punk ripper that feels custom built to send audiences into a shout-along, beer-fueled frenzy. Try not to spill your pint when thrashing around the living room to this one.
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GIFT – “Going in Circles”
Brooklyn band GIFT have an affinity for the kind of widescreen, anthemic, driving rock that ’80s alternative groups like Echo & The Bunnymen and The Church did so well. Some people might call this shoegaze, and while there are definitely layers of hazy guitars on the massively hooky and satisfying “Going in Circles,” GIFT are looking to stars, not their feet.
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Luke Temple and The Cascading Moms – “I Can Dream”
After a few albums dancing as Art Feynman (including last year’s fantastic Be Good the Crazy Boys), Luke Temple is now chilling out with his chill new trio The Cascading Moms. “I Can Dream” actually began life as an Art Feynman song, but has here been transformed into a lightly tropical ballad perfect for magic hour cocktails as you wait to watch the sun set below the Pacific.
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Mahogany – “A Scaffold”
In some ways Mahogany feel like America’s My Bloody Valentine, and while they are much less well known, the parallels are there. Led by a sonic genius (Andrew Prinz) with a singular vision who spent six years on a mindblowing second album (2006’s Connectivity!), the group seemed trapped by their own artistic success, and despite the occasional show and of albums worth of material being recorded, never released anything else. Until now! With its volleying bassline, motorik groove, and clear-but-ethereal vocals, “A Scaffold” is instantly recognizable as Mahogany (nobody else sounds quite like them) and is pretty awesome. Fingers crossed there’s more where this came from soon.
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Peggy Gou – “Lobster Telephone”
DJ and producer Peggy Gou’s long-awaited debut album is out any minute and her ability to intermingle different dance styles is irresistible on this single. “Lobster Telephone” takes elements of ’90s house, ’80s Tangerine Dream, and just a little techno and crams it into one bright red crustacean-shaped communication device. What’s it about? Peggy offers this (translated) advice: “I know you don’t understand this / But it doesn’t matter / It’s all the same / We’re all the same.” That’s certainly true on the dance floor.
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Quivers – “Apparition”
With a cowbell countoff intro, “Apparition” instantly wins you over and Quivers keeps hold of you while borrowing bits from the Rolling Stones (a very Keith Richards riff) and Pavement (“Oh my god, oh my god / everybody’s god, everybody’s got a reason” is straight out of “Shady Lane”). The real key, as usual with Quivers, is Bella Quinlan and Sam Nicholson’s melodies and trade-off vocal style that greets you with open arms.
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Robber Robber – “Backup Plan”
“Backup Plan” hooked me from its opening seconds with a clanking rhythm that sounds sampled from a factory floor. Robber Robber are not an industrial band, though, which becomes apparent just a few seconds later as Nina Cates’ voice pulls things into much more human territory. Then the guitars blast in. “Backup Plan” never goes where you expect it too but every left turn is welcome. This is indie rock at Dutch Angles.
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The The – “Cognitive Dissident”
The The return after 24 years and it’s like they never left. With lyrics that include “Truth stands on the gallows / Liеs sit on the throne / Something in thе shadows / Communicates by code / The unthinkable is now thinkable / The poison, it’s drinkable,” delivered in Matt Johnson’s instantly recognizable, breathy but powerful voice (which also hasn’t aged a day), “Cognitive Dissident” could’ve been on 1989’s Mind Bomb. A welcome return when, as Matt once put it, “Armageddon Days Are Here (Again).”
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Tindersticks – “New World”
There has always been a soulful quality to Tindersticks’ music and frontman Stuart Staples voice, but they’re really leaning into it on upcoming album Soft Tissue. “New World” opens with blasts of horns, and you might think you put on a Charles Bradley record by mistake, but then in comes Staples’ voice and you know where you are. It’s such a natural fit, especially in the chorus with its killer backing vocals, that you wonder why Tindersticks never went there before.
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The WAEVE – “City Lights”
Everybody knows Blur’s Graham Coxon is an amazing guitarist, but did you know he’s no slouch on saxophone either? He lets it bleat on both instruments on “City Lights,” the swoony new single from The WAEVE, his duo with partner Rose Elinor Dougall. This one starts pretty Blur-y, at times, in the indie-est of ways — Coxon’s guitar hook gnaws at the back of your head — but here comes the chorus and Dougall’s voice, which is as cinematic as it gets, and then the sax solo blows in straight out of 1985. By the end he’s trading licks with himself on both instruments. It’s awesome but I do wonder how they will pull it off live?
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INDIE BASEMENT – BEST ALBUMS OF MAY 2024
Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown (Domino)
It’s been 16 years since Beth Gibbons made Portishead’s Third, her last studio album, and a lot has happened since, especially in the last decade as she entered her 50s. “It has been a time of farewells to family, friends and even to who I was before,” Beth said. Lives Outgrown, Beth’s first record solely under her own name, puts all those ruminations on aging and mortality front and center. It’s heavy and you feel every gram. Of course, this is also what you want in a Beth Gibbons record, tracing all the way back to “Sour Times” and “Roads.” But this is not Portishead. Beth said she wanted to “draw away from breakbeats and snares,” and working with producer James Ford and longtime collaborator Lee Harris of Talk Talk, she has made a record of autumnal chill and color, the sounds of the last leaves falling off the trees as rendered in exquisite beauty and earth tones. It is closest, sonically, to Out of Season, her 2002 collaborative album with Rustin Man, but it’s more expansive than that record, full of unexpected touches.
One thing that hasn’t changed since Third is Gibbons’ voice, which still has the power to wreck you with a single phrase and her facile delivery electrifies every song, every lyric, every “ooh.” For all the dwelling on death and pain, Lives Outgrown never wallows, and a few songs offer a sense of hope and metamorphosis. “Now I’ve come out of the other end, I just think, you’ve got to be brave,” she says. Or, as she sings on “Floating on a Moment,” with a children’s chorus behind her, “all we have is here and now.”
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Beak> – >>>> (Invada / Temporary Residence Ltd)
Beak>, the trio of drummer Geoff Barrow (Portishead), bassist Billy Fuller (Robert Plant’s Sensational Space Shifters) and keyboardist/guitarist Will Young (Moon Gangs), surprise-released what is easily the group’s best record yet which A) plays great as a seamless album experience, yet B) has plenty of standout cuts, and C) sports what will surely be my Album Cover of the Year when December comes. (That’s Barrow’s dog and band mascot Alfie, who passed on during the making of the album. RIP, Alf.) This trio have had a very distinctive style since day one — a murky, rhythmic mix from a wide variety of ’70s head music — but they have never sounded more in the zone than here. While the group wouldn’t be Beak> without Barrow’s drumming and vocals, and Young’s woozy synths and arpeggiated guitar-work, it’s Fuller’s amazing bass lines that lift this one to the top of the heap. There’s a fungal, peat moss vibe to what they do (Fuller says Beak> sound like “we were coming out of the ground”) that carries across the variety of sounds found on >>>>, be it folk (“Hungry Are We”), Can-style grooves (“The Seal,” “Ah Yeh”), doomy prog (“Windmill Hill”) or claustrophobic synthwave (“Secrets”). Then there’s awesome closer “Cellophane” that starts off as a bad trip and ends in near-metal acid rock freakout. What they do is not for everyone, but if your brain is wired this way, put on some good headphones and get ready for Beak> to crack your egg.
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Bibi Club – Feu de garde (Secret City Records)
Some records feel instantly transportive, tapping into old memories or hitting an emotion center that you didn’t know you had. The second album from Montreal’s Bibi Club does that for me. The music singer/keyboardist Adèle Trottier-Rivard and guitarist Nicolas Basque (of Plants & Animals) make has a nostalgic melancholy running through its veins, warbly in all the right ways. To call it sad would not be exactly right, but there is a wistful breeze blowing through these 11 songs that make you want to close your eyes, sway and feel it blow across your cheek. Some are danceable, some folky, and some evoke ’60s French pop by way of early-’80s post punk. At the center is Trottier-Rivard’s voice, breathy and inviting, that is especially good at “oohs” and “ahhs” that convey as much feeling as any words (though half of the record is in French so I’m admittedly missing a lot of top-level intent). The arrangements on Feu le garde are minimal yet very cinematic and recall early-’00s output of Morr Music (The Notwist, Lali Puna). From the autumnal “Parc de Beauvoir,” through the spring bloom of “Rue du Repos,” it’s an album for all seasons, at least for anyone with a taste for the bittersweet.
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Camera Obscura – Look to the East, Look to the West (Merge)
It is really good to have Camera Obscura back. Their previous album, Desire Lines, was released 11 years ago and in that time the band has gone through a lot. Keyboardist Carey Lander died in 2015, and Tracyanne Campbell lost her brother and also became a mother. (Plus: covid and everything else 2020 had to give the world.) The grief and joy are all present on Look to the East, Look to the West, the Glaswegian band’s wonderful sixth album which is a return to form in many ways. After two albums for 4AD they are back on Merge, home to their best albums (Underachievers Please Try Harder and Let’s Get Out of This Country), and they are reunited with producer of those, Jari Haapalainen. Recorded mostly live-to-tape at Rockfield Studios in Wales, there’s an energy to these songs, even the saddest, sparest of them, like the dreamy “Sleepwalking,” which is one of a few about Campbell’s brother. (The wonderful “Liberty Print,” which opens the album, is another.) As usual, Campbell brings empathy and that Scottish wit to her lyrics, cutting the bitter with the sweet, instinctually knowing when to lighten the mood with a sly joke. Camera Obscura have never lacked in tunes, but the melodies are especially memorable this time while taking some surprising turns with inspired arrangements, including well-deployed pedal steel that underlines the band’s long-present country tendencies. (The guitar playing is, across the board, understated yet spectacular on this album.) All these elements are present on instant-classic “We’re Going to Make it In a Man’s World,” where the melodies, arrangements, vocals and lyrics all come together in that winsome way that few do like Camera Obscura. “The birds and the bees, they’ve been so sweet to me,” Campbell coos, facing off against an insurance adjuster, as bells chime around her words, then adding, “Take your report, shove it right down your throat.” It’s heartening that this group, which is rapidly approaching their 30th anniversary are still making music, this good, this vital.
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+/- {Plus/Minus} – Further Afield (Ernest Jennings Record Co)
NYC indie rock vets +/- {Plus/Minus} have been together since 2001 and James Baluyut has another decade on top of that with Versus, but on their first album in 10 years they sound like a band of 20-somethings, full of youthful spark and wild creativity. Take opening song “Borrowed Time,” a song that is actually about getting older but is the kind of hyper-jangle indie rock that could’ve been out on their old label Teenbeat Records in 1995. The rest of Further Afield is just as memorable: the “ooooh”-filled “Gondolier” is laid-back and very dreamy; “Driving Aimlessly” leans toward danceable synthpop; “Calling Off the Rescue” could almost be the Moody Blues (not a criticism); and “The Pull from Both Sides” flies on gossamer wings of shoegazey guitars and glitchy electronics. Some of the pep in their step comes via drummer Chris Deaner, who is one of the best to do it (and played for Kelly Clarkson in the mid-’00s), but everyone here sounds energized and at the top of their game. Bands who are trying to come back after a decade — this is how you do it.
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Paul Weller – 66 (Solid Bond / Universal)
Paul Weller rarely does the same thing twice. Twice in a row, at least. For his 17th album, which arrives one day shy of his 66th birthday, he’s created a lush and soulful world draped in swooning orchestration and featuring a wide range of cool friends and collaborators, not to mention a bunch of great new songs. That he manages to always find new places to go that fit within his amazing body of work — that includes The Jam and The Style Council — is arguably Weller’s biggest talent. Like 2021’s terrific Fat Pop (Vol 1), 66 isn’t entirely beholden to a single style. There are rock songs (“Jumble Queen,” written with Noel Gallagher), disco numbers (“Flying Fish”), and Jaques Brel-style baroque (“My Best Friend’s Coat,” a co-write with Le Superhomard) but the strings and horns and woodwinds — and Weller’s impeccable taste — tie it all together. That said it’s the wistful, soulful numbers that really soar. “Nothing,” one of a few songs written with Madness frontman Suggs McPherson, is an instant classic, sounding a bit like a modern update on what Weller did in The Style Council, with jazzy chords, brass and psychedelic synth solos, set against ruminations of a long-lasting relationship: “Nothing forged our love / Out of nothing / Because it was only by / Having nothing / We were able to realise / We needed nothing else / But each other.” Mellow maybe, but Paul continues to throw heater after heater. May all of your heroes age this gracefully.
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Here’s the Indie Basement Best of May 2024 playlist, available in (popular) Spotify and (sonically superior) TIDAL forms.
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